LOST – Why Was It Such A Phenomenon?

Last night was the finale of LOST, and for someone like me, it was bittersweet. I got caught up in the series when a friend lent me season 1 and 2, and was quickly captivated with the show. I forced my husband to watch it with me, and ever since the two of us have been die-hard LOST fans, the geeks of all geeks with our own theoretical debates. In fact, one of my theories (that I fine-tuned in The Kensington Pub in Calgary one evening after a few pints with my now-husband) was turned into a murder mystery game (See MAROONED – It’s still in the old format but remains, to this day, one of the strongest, most unique murder mystery games available for download, and even contains alternate endings).

Now that I have firmly established that I am a huge dork who goes to pubs and ends up talking about theories of black holes, parallel dimensions and time travel when drunk, I would like to look at the series from a different standpoint. Why was LOST such a phenomenon?

My background is in fiction writing, although I have done journalism, ghost writing, copy writing, extensive marketing and finally became – go figure – a mystery game creator. LOST fascinates me, not only from the view of it being a fantastic, intriguing story, but also how it has captured so many different strains of people.

My caveat is that, when I’m talking about the fans, I mean the ones who can actually tell you what occurred after season 3. The time slot allowed for fans of American Idol and Grey’s Anatomy the chance to view LOST between their usual shows and get grow attached to Jack and Sawyer while they waited for Patrick Dempsey to make his appearance just one hour later. After season three, it was like a line was drawn in the sand – the dabblers in it to see Evangeline Lilly in a wet shirt and Josh Holloway with no shirt (or clothes at all, in some cases) verses the fans who were driven by the need for answers.

And those fans are a weird mix. Sci-Fi geeks of course, but also single moms, young pot-smoking sex-toy consultants, bitter basement-dwelling cat ladies, world adventurers, Scots, Aussies, Yanks, Canucks, Nicaraguans… you name it, they were on board. The same person who Tweets about the upcoming episode of Glee would spout theories about the smoke monster in their very next status update. How, in a world where targeting a specific niche is touted as the ONLY way to succeed could a TV show have hit so many demographics and won die-hard fans from each one? What exactly WAS their demographic? I don’t even think Carlton and Damon knew.

Never before has a show done what LOST did – and that was to hit EVERYTHING – and hit it well. Think back to High School English (for some of us that’s a more distant memory than for others). A story was always one of three possible conflicts: Man vs. Man, Man vs. The Universe (unknown) or Man vs. Himself. It was drilled into my head that it could never be anything other than those three, and never could the primary plot driver be more than one conflict at a time.

Well lord love a duck, guess what LOST did? There was man vs. man as a central theme – the Losties battling The Others, whether they knew who the true Others were or not. There was man vs. the unknown right from the very start, the first time our friend Smokie made an appearance from the jungle. And there was Man vs. Himself – as illustrated so well with the flashbacks, forwards and sideways (AKA Heaven).

All right, put the text books away. Not only were the conflicts of LOST a hodge-podge of all the possibilities, there were also multiple genres. No one can say LOST was a Sci-Fi show alone, although it’s run on SPACE is so far quite successful. There were definitely science fiction themes, including parallel dimensions (although this could now be argued), time travel, moving landmasses, frozen donkey wheels and electromagnetic energy.

There was action (Sawyer gunning down polar bear and almost every episode post Henry Gale, Ben was getting the crap kicked out of him for something), adventure (Just when we thought they got settled on the beach, the Losties would section off and go trekking through the jungle for some reason), comedy (Everything about Hurley and Sawyer’s hilarious nickname), Crime (how many criminals and degenerates can amass on one plane?!), Drama (Sawyer’s really James Ford, a jaded, angry man seeking resolution for his parents deaths… with the right director it could be a four hour snooze-fest!) Epic/Historical (Egyptian Hieroglyphs, slave ships, testing of nuclear weapons – this storyline spanned 2000+ years) Horror (Scary monster in the jungle who slaughters no-namers in bloody ways…) The only genre LOST didn’t hit was Musical, although I believe if the producers ever explored their Zombie storyline, it could have gone that way.

Each episode was filmed as a movie, right from the incredibly compelling pilot episode. It was also established right at the start that we’d better not get attached to any character, because anyone can die – a chance most television producers won’t take.

But most of all, for me, LOST was the mystery of all mysteries. It had me guessing and forming wild theories of my own to the very end. Considering what I do for a living, it’s become very difficult for me to watch any show or movie and be stumped, but LOST had me guessing the entire time. They coloured outside the lines, thought outside the (magic) box and revolutionized television, and will be the yard stick against which new dramatic shows will be measured. I’m convinced the only ones who can make a better show than LOST are the LOST guys.